R. Geigy Foundation Award 2000,
Country: Ghana, born: 1953
“The design of our research project with insecticide-treated bed nets stipulated that not everyone – only randomly chosen households – would receive such a net. However, everyone wanted to sleep under a mosquito net.”
In 1992, the Ghanaian doctor and epidemiologist, Fred Newton Binka, was appointed director of the Navrongo Health Research Center in Northern Ghana, where he greatly contributed to its success. Binka and his team not only committed themselves to medical research but were also eager to translate scientific results into tangible health improvements at the local and national level. Binka maintained close ties to the Swiss Tropical Institute, which, in 1997, culminated in the award of a doctorate from the University of Basel. Binka preferred working in his native Ghana to an international research career in the US or Europe. In 2007, he became dean of the School of Public Health of the University of Ghana. In 2012, he was elected director of the University of Health and Allied Sciences in Ho (Ghana) where he devotes himself to the training young Ghanaian scientists.